Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

by Jay Heinrichs

*Bestseller on Amazon.com*
*New York Times Education bestseller*

THANK YOU FOR ARGUING is one of the top-ten most assigned books at Harvard University. It has gone back to press 27 times, with 300,000 copies sold. For when you really have to get your point across…

THANK YOU FOR ARGUING is a master class in the art of persuasion, taught by professors ranging from Bart Simpson to Winston Churchill. The time-tested secrets disclosed in this book include Cicero’s three-step strategy for moving an audience to action, and Abraham Lincoln’s “Shameless Trick” of lowering an audience’s expectations by pretending to be unpolished. It’s also replete with contemporary techniques such as politicians’ use of “code” language to appeal to specific groups and an eye-opening assortment of popular-culture dodges.

You’ll learn how to set your goals, shift the discussion onto favorable ground, and convince your audience—all while making them feel like they won.

Whether you’re an inveterate lover of language or just want to win a lot more anger-free arguments—THANK YOU FOR ARGUING is for you. Written by one of today’s most popular language mavens, it’s warm, witty, erudite, and truly enlightening.

Jay Heinrichs spent twenty-six years as a writer, editor, and magazine-publishing executive and is now a full-time advocate for the lost art of rhetoric. He lectures widely on the subject to audiences ranging from Ivy League students to NASA scientists to airline executives.

In HOW TO ARGUE WITH A CAT, from Rodale Books in the US and Penguin Press UK, rhetoric expert Jay Heinrichs has teamed up with illustrator Natalie Sutton to show how cats can teach us the ancient art of persuasion. In this funny and informative book, both young and adult readers will learn how cats apply rhetoric to get whatever they want, and how we can too.